[mythtv-users] BE3 - Issues with installation and database

Stephen Worthington stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz
Fri May 31 18:43:56 UTC 2019


On Fri, 31 May 2019 11:45:18 -0500, you wrote:

>Hi Stephen!
>
>
>See what the output of these two commands is:
>
>*fc-list | grep -i droid*
>*locate DroidSans.ttf*
>
>    barry at Backend-3:~$ fc-list | grep -i droid
>
>    /usr/share/fonts/truetype/droid/DroidSansFallbackFull.ttf: Droid
>    Sans Fallback:style=Regular
>
>    barry at Backend-3:~$
>
>    barry at Backend-3:~$
>
>    barry at Backend-3:~$ locate DroidSans.ttf
>
>    /usr/share/mythtv/fonts/DroidSans.ttf
>
>    barry at Backend-3:~$
>
>
>    So the good news is I have the fonts, or at least that font; the bad
>    news is it wasn’t installed. (Tangential side note: I seem to
>    remember similar “font not installed” errors on the old
>    Backends/Frontends – old problem with installation instructions?
>    Backend-3 is a brand-new from-scratch install.)

Now the next thing to do is to check and see if the DroidSans.ttf you
have found is actually a font file, or whether it is a link to
somewhere else.  So what does this command show:

ll /usr/share/mythtv/fonts/*

If all the fonts files in that directory are real font files, not
links, then this should get them installed as fonts:

sudo su
cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
ln -s /usr/share/mythtv/fonts mythtv-fonts
exit

and now running this:

fc-list | grep -i droid

should show all the Droid* fonts.

>
>Yes, you now need to use mythtv-setup to change the master backend IP 
>address to 192.168.0.3 if it is still on 127.0.0.1. Now that the fix for 
>booting after the network is up is in place, that should work properly.
>
>    I’ll admit that ‘should’ is scaring me a little! Here goes!
>
>
>    mythtv-setup. Change at “General”. Exit (that long pause <whimper!>
>    mythfilldatabase
>
>
>    mythfrontend (on BE3) : OK, still seeing the correct displays:
>    Medial Library > Watch Recordings > shows are there.
>
>
>    OK, now the big test: checking on a Remote Fronted (RPi 3 B+)

>
>    Super-long pause at GEC Adapter, turn TV on – I’ll have to look in
>    to that.)
>
>    Wohoo! BE3 stuff displays!
>
>    Ah poo! I see the TV programmes listed but select and get
>
>    Can’t start playback
>
>    TV Player
>
>    Failed to open remote file mytht://
>
>    backend-3/<file number>.ts
>
>
>    Reboot the RPi; try again. Same error.
>
>
>    (That recording does play properly on BE3’s Frontend).
>
>
>    Reboot BE3. ...Test, its Frontend still works.
>
>    RPi Frontend – same error.
>
>
>    https://pastebin.com/q3Msyr49

I tried swapping my config.xml file on my main MythTV box to the one I
use to access my mother's MythTV box, and it all just worked, as it
did on v29.  So I am not sure why you are having trouble doing
something similar.

In your RPi log, I do not like the look of the "SRSL you shouldn't see
this!!" errors I see there.  I have never seen them before.  A quick
search of the source code suggests that you should only get that
message if mythfrontend receives a message intended to be sent by
mythbackend to itself or another backend.  So maybe the RPi
mythfrontend is connecting to the wrong port on BE3???  Given that
error, it is not surprising that you also get "Failed to open socket,
error was malformed_ann_query" and "Failed to open remote file"
errors.

So exactly how are you running mythfrontend on the RPi?  What is in
the config.xml file?  Is that RPi used for accessing other backends?
If so, how do you get it to swap between the backends?

It would also be very useful to see the section of BE3's
mythbackend.log file from when the RPi was trying to play a BE3
recording.

>Yes, you can move the database across to BE3.  If you want to shut
>down BE2 permanently, then that is probably the easiest thing to do -
>just do a backup of the BE2 database, copy the backup file to BE3, and
>then restore the database on BE3 using the hostname change options of
>the restore program to change all the hostname bits in the backup to
>BE3.  Then when MythTV is started again, it will see an old database
>schema and will upgrade it automatically to v30.  You need to copy or
>move all the recording files across (maybe just move the recording
>drives of BE2 into the BE3 PC?).  Doing it this way keeps all the
>information about old recordings and all your recording rules.
>However, if the tuners are different in BE3, you will need to set them
>all up again, as the BE2 database will be set up for BE2's tuners. And
>you will need to make sure the tuner setup you do matches what BE2 had
>so that the recording rules still work.  All of that is a very viable
>thing to do, but it really depends on what you want out of BE3. Since
>keeping all the recording history is very important to me, this is the
>path I would be choosing.
>
>    OK, part of this answer is based on reading the next section. BE3
>    uses the ‘new and improved’ Hauppauge 1609 quad tuner while (BE1
>    and) BE2 use the older Hauppauge 1600 and 2250 tuners. While it
>    would be nice to ‘simply’ transfer over the old database and
>    re-install the new tuner data I’m thinking with all the problem we
>    have the potential for error isn’t worth the minor inconvenience of
>    deleting a previously recorded show. ...

It is not as difficult as you might think to transfer the entire
database using this procedure.  You basically do the same as when you
restore a backed up database, and then have to run mythtv-setup and
set up all the things like IP addresses that are different between the
boxes.  Then you have to delete the tuners and re-install the correct
tuners.  Then you can re-scan the channels if you want to, but that is
actually not necessary.  Since you would, of course, have done a full
backup before doing this, you can always restore that backup at any
time if you have problems you can not overcome.  I used this procedure
many years ago to set up my laptop with a database that is compatible
with my main MythTV box, so that when I use mythexport / mythimport to
copy recordings to it, I get all the channels matching.  In that case,
on the laptop I deleted all the data for the recordings, as I was only
going to be exporting the recordings I want when away from home as
required, not a full copy of everything on my main MythTV box.

The big problem with doing this procedure is that if you have already
started using BE3 for making recordings you want to keep, then you
will have to use mythexport to export those recordings before you
restore BE2's database, and then use mythimport to get them back again
once BE2's converted database is working on BE3.  And you will lose
the information about those recordings that is used to do duplicate
checking.

>Alternatively, if you just want to move the recordings across, I have
>software that can do that (mythexport and mythimport).  But doing it
>for a large number of recordings could be pretty tedious.  And as I
>have not yet upgraded to v30 (which I hope to do this week), I have
>not tested mythexport and mythimport with v30 yet.  I would also need
>to check that exporting from v28 to v30 was OK - the database entries
>for the recording tables would need to match.  I believe v28 to v29 is
>OK, and I have not heard of anything in v30 that would be
>problematical, but until I have v30 running I can not be sure.  If
>necessary I can probably do a modified version of mythexport that
>would do a full export of all recordings, which would get rid of the
>tedious bits.
>  - -
>Since I wrote the above yesterday, I have been able to do my v30
>upgrade.  So in the next couple of days I should be able to test (and
>if necessary fix) my mythexport and mythimport software.

I have now tested mythexport and mythimport and they are working
properly on v30 without needing any changes.  The database tables they
use have not changed between v29 and v30.

>    OK – thanks (again!!). I’m thinking between the two options the
>    safer one for me is this one (move the recordings across:
>    mythexport/mythimport). I had a thought of potentially copying the
>    shows to Videos, perhaps a subdirectory of each show series and the
>    dump the shows in there. Would probably just show the date and the
>    show number. I bet your utility is a lot better!
>
>
>    Worst comes to worse (which isn’t all that bad) is switching between
>    two Frontends, one to BE3 (the new one) and BE2 (the old one)
>
>
>    TIA!
>    Barry

When using mythexport/mythimport, you get your recordings with all
their data in the recordings tables, so they show up as normal
recordings.  However, if your channel tables differ between the two
systems, you will get either the wrong channel information displayed
(if the chanid from BE2 matches a different channel in BE3), or you
will get the channel information displayed as #xxxxx where xxxxx is
the chanid for the channel on BE2.  This does not cause any problems
at all with playback of the files, as MythTV is very tolerant of
little things like this, but just looks a bit ugly on screen.


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